Pennywise is set to return in a forthcoming It prequel series on HBO Max.

The infamous clown will be given an origin story in the new series set in the 1960s called Welcome to Derry, according to Variety.

• READ MORE: IT’s Bill Skarsgård: Meet the man behind the demonic clown Pennywise

It: Part One and It: Part Two director Andy Muschietti is on board to executive produce the series alongside Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuschs.

HBO Max and WBTV have declined requests for comment at the time of writing, and there is no word on further plot or cast details yet.

Back in 2017, Bill Skarsgård explained why he took on the role of Pennywise in a conversation with NME.

“I was excited just to even audition for [Pennywise]. I’m in my mid-twenties, so the roles I’m usually going up for are characters that might be fun, but they’re all pretty close to me,” he said.

“They tend to look like you and talk like you and are the same age as you. It’s very rare, especially for younger actors, to even get the opportunity to audition for this kind of transformative character. The voice, the movement, everything was just this creation.”

In other horror news, Zoom-based thriller Host was recently awarded the title of the scariest film of all time in a new study.

The study was conducted by The Science of Scare Project, which invited 250 people to watch 40 of the “world’s scariest” horror movies.

During the marathon, attendees were “fitted with heart rate monitors and invited into our specially designed screaming rooms to watch the movies over the course of several weeks, under medical and researcher supervision”.